The constant progress of the technology of information and that of the communication systems, particularly with the explosion of the Internet and Intranet networks, has resulted in the development of an era of information. With one single server, It is now possible for any individual or company to provide a substantial information which can be worldwide distributed, thanks to the possibilities provided by the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) possibilities.
As the availability of the information constantly increases, the latter also needs to be more and more updated. It is a general wish to easily create and maintain the information which is provided through the Internet network and which is received in the HTML pages transmitted by the web sites. Generally speaking, the design team of a web site comprises different specialists, including a graphical designer co-operating with the other members of the design team. These are the conditions of a valuable and attractive information which is provided to the potential web site visitors. The graphical designer particularly creates and maintains the different graphical objects, such as the graphical buttons, the images etc. . . which are involved in the HTML pages. He also handles the different aesthetic aspects forming the valuable “look and feel” of the web site. In order to facilitate their work, the graphical designers make an extensive use of graphical edition software which allow them to create and maintain the different graphical objects which are displayed in the HTML pages. The multi-layer editing technique shows to be very useful in that respect since it permits to easily separate the layer carrying the textual information from the other layer(s) which are more dedicated to the aesthetic aspects of the HTML page. In spite of the great help which is provided by those tools, it is clear that the edition of one particular object included in one page inevitably involves the edition of the graphical images themselves, and thus results in additional work for the graphical designer. In most cases, the graphical designer will have to open the image files corresponding to the object which has to be edited, for instance a graphical button which textual information needs to be translated in another language. This inevitably results in a longer development time and higher development costs.
The development of HTML specific tools and the extensive use of the so-called server side extensions may improve the situation since it is the server which receives the function of managing the graphical buttons which are incorporated in a HTML page. More precisely, the server which is fitted with the server side extensions, as defined by Microsoft (TM), has the role of producing the graphical buttons in association with the textual information defined by the web site designers. It is easier for them to edit the different HTML pages since they have only to define the type of the buttons which are to be incorporated within the HTML pages. The server then produces upon demand the HTML pages when those are requested by a web visitor. However, the technique is clearly not applicable everywhere since many servers are not fitted with the server side extensions. In many situations, the web designers are compelled to design the HTML pages and to manage the different image files for the different graphical objects and buttons, particularly when it is necessary to amend the textual information which is therein included.
It is clear that the creation and the edition of the image files tend to become a burden for web site designers. This is much more relevant when considering the fact that, generally speaking, each graphical object which is to be displayed in one HTML page involves three different image files associated to three distinctive states of the object. A first state corresponds to the normal object or button which is displayed to the user. A second state, so-called “onhover”, corresponds to the new image—generally highlighted—which is displayed when the cursor is moving over the object. At last, a third file corresponds to the “selected” state, i.e. the image which is displayed upon selection by the user i.e., when a button object is pressed for instance. Therefore, it appears that even for a very simple HTML page, a great number of different graphical objects have to be managed, i.e. created and updated by the web designers. When a multi-lingual web site needs to be arranged, this might increase substantially the number of graphical images to handle.
In addition, it should be noticed that since most HTML pages tend to become more and more sophisticated, from an aesthetic point of view, (what correlatively increases much more the size and the number of the image files to be downloaded), the difficulty of analysing the HTML page and accessing the textual information is also increased. Indeed, it may be useful to possibly enhance the textual information within the HTLM page, for the convenience of some web users with reduced visual capacities, but also for the numerous automatic searching process which are executed in the automatic scanning systems, such as those known under the familiar name of “web crawlers” or “spiders”. When the textual information is incorporated within a file image, and not directly accessible in ASCII form, this might hinder the searching or scanning process. The use of the ALT properties of the graphical objects is sometimes favoured since it may provide an alternative way for associating a textual information to an image file, provided that such an additional information has been introduced in the ALT properties of the image file. As known by the skilled man, the ALT properties are used for displaying a particular textual information to the user when the latter overlies the cursor on a particular object. When the web designers incorporate into the ALT properties of an object the definition or a short explanation of the considered image, that definition or explanation can be accessed by the automatic web crawler for the purpose of indexing the image. It is however clear that a direct access to the meaning of a button or to the textual information associated to one graphical object is always preferable.
Obviously, one could reconsider the opportunity of incorporating sophisticated graphical images for the purpose of allowing the automatic scanning system a direct access to the textual information associated to the hyperlink. However this possibility is not feasible in view of the strong success of the aesthetic web site and the enthusiastic demand of visitors for those.
It is therefore a general wish to facilitate the creation and the maintenance of the different graphical objects which are associated with textual information, such as the hyperlink buttons. The edition of those objects should be made possible within the frame of the HTML page in order to minimise any implication of the graphical designer and the use of additional graphical edition tool. Not only this implication should be minimised—thus entailing a cost reduction.
Additionally, it is desirable to reduce the size of the files which are included within the HTML pages, while preserving the general “look and feel” of the pages. It is also required that the HTML pages are interpreted and displayed by any HTML web browser, even of the earlier generation.
At last, it is desirable that the HTML pages still support the automatic analysis and search processes which are carried out by the automatic scanning systems. The user should also be allowed to deselect the downloading of the image files in the web browser settings, and still be capable of navigating through the HTML pages.